Welcome to SCRAPSVILLE! Scraps is a fun game medium-weight game about putting together different scraps to create robots, competing in competitions and events, trying to win the big tournament. The game takes place in the same universe as many of the other games I am designing, All of which are different races created for my first asymmetric game: Dominance. Scraps is one of the original six races in Dominance, meant to be the “comic-relief” in the storyline of the Dominance universe, Scraps are a race of robots, living in a wasteland that used to be inhabited by primates. Generally a peaceful race, that go about their daily cycle scavenging for valuable scraps to sell, exchange for batteries or use to build other robots. Scraps live to worship the glowing green rock! a radioactive crystal that emits energy… their source of life… in the game batteries are the most sought after resource, they indicate the wealth and power of each robot.
GAME THEME & FEEL:
I always love in boardgames the feeling of “accomplishment”… how the game looks in the setup vs. after the game ends… like in carcasone, Imperial settlers, Terraforming mars, Everdell…. mostly engine building / tableau building games…. but that sense of being proud of what you have “created” regardless of winning or not….
So in Scraps, I wanted to have players create silly, ridiculous looking robots, using them to compete against each other in the big arena.
GAME MECHANICS: Worker placement, tile placement/puzzle solving, special abilities… all of which to gain the most victory points through various ways. Players will be collecting scraps, using them to build different body parts, butting them together in creative ways to form their robot… each body part gives different stats, either makes the robot stronger, more defensive, smarter or faster… Player take turns sending one of their robot helpers to do one of the following actions:
1. Collect scraps from the scrap pile
2. Build a body part
3. Install a new upgrade
4. Compete in the arena
5. Participate in the science fare
DESIGN PROCESS:
I started by drawing the gameboard, which for me sets the entire theme and feel of the game. The next step was to define a grid for the player boards, and build the player boards in a way that the robots are hidden.. they are only revealed during the tournament phase. After that, I spent a lot of time drawing different body parts that would later make up the robots….. That took a LONG time! but once it was done, I jumped on to making a sketch for how the cards would look like, having the four different stats defining the body part attributes.
Finally, I made the upgrade tiles and the scrap tokens.
